Tuesday, August 23, 2011

The inaugural edition of the Index Festival is in full swing. At first glance the idea of holding an event August does not seem ideal; so many people using this time to go out of town to enjoy the last few weeks of summer. And yet the choice of putting on the Index Festival in August has the virtue of presenting fewer conflicts with other things happening at the same time, as is typical of the rest of the year.

Monday, August 8, 2011

The films and filmmakers were Cet Air La by Marie Losier, Summer Reading, pt 1 (When We Were Witches) by Jeanne Liotta, Eros c'est Lamour by Bradley Eros and Tim Geraghty, Portrait #2: Trojan by Vanessa Renwick, and a special screening of Entr'acte by Rene Clair, Francis Picabia, and Erik Satie with live soundtrack by Joel Schlemowitz's Krupnik Orchestra.

***

The "live soundtrack by Joel Schlemowitz's Krupnik Orchestra" consisted of instruments handed out to the audience to provide a live score. A highly improvised undertaking, albeit with some conducting to indicate various cues in the film. It's not the first time that an audience was given out instruments to make music for a film score: I recall a wonderful evening at Issue Project Room with The Parasitic Fantasy Band, which included one piece where Sam Hamilton handed out hand-percussion instruments, bells, and chimes to the audience members as part of the "live ephemeral expanded cinema and ecstatic 16mm/8mm film and sound performances." The experience was a low tech version of "surround sound" -- the tinkling sounds emanating from everywhere around the room.

Of course the auditory results of little hand-percussion instruments are much different than what you get from our orchestra's array of instruments: a trombone, a french horn, a bugle, crash cymbals, a banjo, melodicas, flutes, drums, and various other highly noisy things. A little video excerpt of the musical mayhem is posted below.

And later on, as the afternoon thunderstorms arrived, drinks at Sunny's.

A blog that meanders the experimental film screenings, film soirees, and expanded cinema extravaganzas in and around New York City. The title comes from the eclectic little Cine Soiree film series. A celebratory approach to the avant-garde film.